226  Still here

Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2001 11:37:02 -0700
From: Mark Sussex <doktordogg@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Still here

Hi list,

I received a mountain of email requesting my account
of my experiences surrounding the Attack. I'm going
to risk being ganchoed by the moderators and post my
description of that day. It's pretty long and not
tango-related. I promise not to do it again!

I'm also going to take this opportunity to "come out".
I work in computers and have used newsgroups a lot.
I never use my real name on those things. It isn't to
deceive anyone. It's just smart in public forums to
remain anonymous. Even on this list, I was harrassed
a few times by people off list.

However, I now know so many people on this list in
face-to-face encounters, this anonymity seems rather
silly and I've been meaning to end this inane charade.
It was fun for a while because I wanted to post some
risque emails. But now it's time to put "Mark Sussex"
to rest. "Mark Sussex" is actually Jai Jeffryes. Big
deal...

Here's an update of my situation after the Attack.

I wasn't up in one of the towers. My building is 2
World Financial Center, which is adjacent. I'm
usually walking across the plaza precisely at the time
that the first impact occured.

HOWEVER, I WAS LATE TO WORK THAT DAY!

Can you believe it?

My company is doing fine. No one perished. We're
waiting for engineers to certify the structural
soundness of our building before attempting recovery
operations. I'm appending below an account of my
experiences that day. I've had so many interesting
replies. Friends of mine have been forwarding it.
One friend sent it to someone I don't even know, but
that person had already received it! I got a request
from a teacher I don't know in California who asked my
permission to read it to her class.

Jai Jeffryes
Deloitte & Touche
September 12, 2001

Hi everybody,

I'm still here, and I'm fine. If you can believe it,
merely three weeks ago I began working at 2 World
Financial Center, the building adjoining the World
Trade Center. Yesterday, I was running a little
behind schedule. The time that the first airplane
impacted is the time that I'm usually walking across
the plaza below. My train bypassed my station, which
annoyed me because that meant I would have to walk two
blocks back to get to the World Trade Center. I had
no idea that anything had just transpired, except some
guy got on one stop back and was raving about
something that he said still had him shaking. I
thought he had witnessed a mugging or maybe he was
just crazy.

When I got out at the Wall Street station it was mere
seconds after the second plane had impacted and I was
in the middle of pandemonium. It looked like the
beginning of a ticker tape parade with paper and
debris raining down on the street. I turned a corner
and saw the twin towers aflame. I circled the area
trying to find out if my building was still intact.

It never occured to me that 110-storey skyscrapers
could collapse. Viewing the fire and smoke, I could
not even believe what I was seeing. As I circled the
area, the fires were becoming visibly larger and I
could see more deeply into the interior of the
building. It was dawning on me that this fire could
never be controlled. Then I heard the sound of the
tower collapsing. I didn't know that was what was
happening because I couldn't see it. I thought maybe
some of the facade had fallen away. Fortunately, I
was not hit by any debris, but a tide of ash rolled
over my area and engulfed all of us. It was like a
nuclear winter. I was right against the river by
Battery Park and just about ready to jump into the
water, but I realized there was no fire coming at me.
It was just ash and soot. I pulled my shirt up over
my nose and mouth and avoided breathing any of it. It
was akin to snowflakes, but thicker than any blizzard.
I could see 10-20 feet anead of me and that was it.
Day became night, and other people who were getting
that gunk in their throats were hacking and
expectorating.

I didn't know how much of the building had fallen, but
I believed there could be more collapses, so I
endeavored to walk south and east around the tip of
Manhattan before any more waves of ash could roll over
me. Shortly thereafter, I heard the same sound again
which turned out to be the other tower collapsing. By
this time, the first tidal wave of soot had thinned
out enough for me to see that now a second one was
rolling in my direction and would catch up in about 5
minutes. I kept walking briskly eastward, so when it
finally hit me it was considerably thinner than the
one that hit me when I was only a block away from the
area.

I finally got far enough north not to be downwind of
the conflagration. I was covered from head to toe
with white ash that I heard one firefighter speculate
consisted of pulverized concrete. It was as if
someone had emptied a sack of lime over me. I knew
from the time right after I exited the subway that it
was important for me to make phone calls to loved ones
to let them know I was okay. (That was before two
110-storey skyscrapers collapsed into oblivion
practically right next to me!) However, long lines
were to be found at every pay phone. I finally got my
bearings and walked uptown. In Chinatown, I finally
found a pay phone that had only a few people in line
in front of it. I called my folks who were mightily
relieved. (Incidentally, my calling card from Excel
wouldn't work, but 1-800-COLLECT did... this is an
unsolicited endorsement!)

I was starving, for I had eaten nothing at all yet.
Street vendors were in business, so I bought a
shishkebab in a pita. As I was standing there, I
coughed from the charcoal smoke from the grill. I
laughed ironically at myself standing there covered in
soot from America's worst terrorist attack yet too
oblivious to stand upwind of a street vendor's burning
charcoal!

The streets were choked with people because no
transportation services were functioning. You could
easily discern who had been near the attack and who
had not. The throngs of people headed uptown and
covered in soot were the ones who'd been in it. The
throngs of people headed downtown were the ones who
hadn't been there and were trying to get a closer
look. I made my way to the west side 20's where my
brother works. I didn't know if my parents had
succeeded in getting through to him by phone since
phone service was spotty. He had heard nothing about
me, and said over and over again that he had hoped I
would have the sense just to come to his office.

It was there that I first saw the footage of the
collapsing towers. I was dumbfounded. I hadn't
realized that this was what caused the sound I had
first heard from the next block. The area where the
rubble fell was the side where I had been standing
approximately 15 minutes earlier.

I continued my walk uptown. I bought an NYC tee-shirt
from a tourist shop along the way to replace the soot-
and mucous-encrusted shirt I was wearing and that had
saved me from breathing any appreciable amounts of an
incinerated World Trade Center. I also bought contact
lens solution to clean my contacts and flush out my
eyes. I stopped at a friend's apartment to wash off
the soot, change into my clean tee-shirt and flush my
eyes.

I still don't know if the building my company is in (2
World Financial Center) still exists. I don't know
the status of my job nor that of the other guys on my
team, who often arrive about the same time as I do. I
might not get annoyed at slow trains anymore. Had I
left for work 10 minutes earlier and not been on a
delayed train, I would have been right under the face
of the WTC when the first plane hit!

Every time I see clips of that blizzard of ash, I
could swear that I still smell it.

Jai



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